The Practical Side of Style

The 1956 Eames chair and ottoman, left, became a classic. Will the Zero chaise  on display this week with its designer, Nolen Niu, right  be in stores in 50 years?Credit...Photographs by Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

May 25, 2006

TWO, three, four, five," said Nolen Niu, counting the thousands on what will be the probable retail price for Zero, the lipstick-red lounge chair he showed at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York last weekend.

"My target market is the younger, upcoming, new generation — the loft generation," said Mr. Niu, a 31-year-old Los Angeles designer (nolen@nolenniu.com) who got his start with shoes and sunglasses, and is also working on a house for Joseph Hahn, the D.J. for the rap-rock band Linkin Park. "They have a little bit more disposable income. They want to get something that individualizes their space."

Mr. Niu, who was part of an exhibition of emerging talent sponsored by the fair and by the Bernhardt furniture company, typified a new attitude on display throughout the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York, where the fair was held from May 20 to 23. Like many other young designers there, he had clearly thought at least as hard about the financial side of his work as he had about the engineering or design. He has produced several chairs working with Los Angeles fabricators, but explained that the design was "factory ready" if a manufacturer showed an interest. (None did at the Javits center, though several people expressed a desire to buy the chairs, Mr. Niu said.)

Certainly the fair did not offer the brave future of furnishings once promised by events like this. There was a surfeit of perfectly acceptable, reasonably affordable, stylish if not stimulating goods on the floor — wares that seemed to please both the exhibitors (nearly 600 from 31 countries) and the more than 23,000 visitors.

Aside from a few idiosyncratic pieces — sofas that seat up to 20 people, inflatable rec rooms, foam carpets that change color when exposed to heat — what was notable was a new pragmatism among young designers more interested in finding a way to prosper in an increasingly competitive design market than in making a statement. Talk of reinventing life at home, a subject designers used to yammer your ears off about, has been replaced by conversations about how to find buyers for a $5,000 chair, or a manufacturer for a $50 lamp.

A piece that held pride of place at the fair, the 50-year-old rosewood lounge chair by Charles and Ray Eames (several versions of which marked the anniversary in a display at the Herman Miller booth) pointed up, in its iconic status, how significant this change in the contemporary furniture market has been. In 1956, when the Eameses designed their chair, it stood out easily from the mass of traditional pieces from which it was making a clean, clear break. Even more recent pieces, like Marc Newson's 1986 Lockheed Lounge, a prototype of which will be auctioned next month for a price that Sotheby's in New York estimates at more than $800,000, have managed to become cultural touchstones.

But if a latter-day equivalent were introduced today, it might go unnoticed in the teeming contemporary furniture market that comprises West Elm, Ikea, Todd Oldham for La-Z-Boy, Thomas O'Brien for Target, and companies like Kartell, which show in Milan as well as in New York. Then there are new faces like Mr. Niu, trying to turn design-school diplomas into careers.

Indeed, Mr. Niu and his colleagues are competing with the Eameses themselves, who are alive and well in the form of popular production pieces, along with scores of other midcentury designers, whose work is continually reissued for an enthusiastic new audience that doesn't distinguish between modern and contemporary.

Then, too, there is the difficulty of getting a design produced. Emeco, a company with a best-selling aluminum chair designed for the United States Navy in 1944, has worked with Philippe Starck, Frank Gehry and other design celebrities to produce new models of its chair. But it doesn't work with talented unknowns.

"The development cost of a new product can be $500,000 to $1 million," said Daniel Fogelson, Emeco's vice president for sales and marketing, standing before a fleet of aluminum chairs at the fair. "You can't risk it on kids."

For those who have struck out on their own, like the Minneapolis design firm Blu Dot (bludot.com), the risks are acute. Blu Dot first appeared at the New York furniture fair in 1997, and has managed to succeed and return each year since largely on the basis of practicalities like efficient shipping and attractive pricing. Though it doesn't manufacture its own products, it designs them to anticipate ways in which manufacturing costs can be kept down, and the products themselves are easy to pack and ship.

"We're the only ones left standing," said John Christakos, one of Blu Dot's three founders, of the designers who received major media attention in 1997, making a nervous joke.

But Mr. Fogelson of Emeco, whose 25-year experience in retailing design spans the history of the furniture fair, which started in 1989, said that he thought a new emphasis on professionalism was strengthening the hand of today's new designers.

"Young companies like Blu Dot look like real companies," he said. "And the kids showing here are aiming at that." Mr. Fogelson added that, unlike the fresh-out-of-school hopefuls whose unproduceable art-student or craftlike output was once typical at the fair, "They're aiming at a completely different level than they were 10 years ago."

And Adrienne McNicholas, a consultant who works with designers on the business aspects of product development and introduction, said she sees the tide shifting among younger designers, from "wanting to be a rock star to knowing they'll have a reliable, viable business."

This focus on viability may have drained some of the creative spirit out of their work, but it has also contributed to what may be the most promising aspect of contemporary design right now, its widespread concern with accessibility, and with finding innovative ways to achieve it.

North South Project (northsouthproject.com), a Canadian exhibitor, produced elegant, affordable furniture by pairing manufacturers in developing countries, like Peter Mabeo, 35, and Otsile Mabeo, 30, in Botswana, with its designer, Patty Johnson, 46, in Toronto. The Mabeos, who are married, own their company. Ms. Johnson worked side by side with them, developing her designs more as a collaboration with the manufacturers than as a job to be outsourced to them. The Mabeos, in turn, were able to help the designer incorporate a higher level of craft and finish into the design.

New designers like Kouichi Okamoto, 27, who showed an accordion of paper that unfolds, like a party ornament, into a lamp base (kyouei-ltd.co.jp), or Michelle Butler, 32, of Isolyn, who creates magnetized felt flowers and panels as a kind of wallpaper you can play with, are doing what designers do best: using ordinary materials to create interesting products without extraordinary costs involved (isolyn.com).

Ideas are cheap. Matthew Kroeker, 29, designed Splinter, a funny and likable pair of teak chairs that share a jagged edge that can be interlocked to produce a bench, or pulled back apart. Mr. Kroeker called it "a metaphor for a bad-marriage day." Divorce as design; settee as quick settlement. Because of the cost of North American teak (Mr. Kroeker is based in Winnipeg, matthewkroeker.com), the chair, if produced, would likely cost more than $1,000. The prototype cost $1,800. But because the concept is strong, the designer is considering using other materials, including recycled plastics. As of yesterday, no one had made Mr. Kroeker any offers to pick up the design.

Shawn Sinyork, 34, and Eskil Tomozy, 37, of Emesu ("use me" backward; useme@emesu.com) in San Francisco, had a belt-leather beanbag lounge chair and ottoman with them — a Birkenstock for the body and, with its suede good looks, an upscale update of a downscale favorite. Though they hope a retail price would be no more than $1,800, the prototype cost $3,000 to make. At the fair, Emesu said, it was approached by several manufacturers interested in producing the lounge.

Terhi Tuominen, a Finnish designer, brought Blackbird, a metal-mesh chair she showed in Milan, which has the simple unexpected silhouette of strong fashion. Blackbird is also structurally uncomplicated and would be easy to manufacture (terhi.tuominen@uiah.fi). Three Cornell University architecture students, Brian Carli, 30; Justine Cheng, 21; and Peter Klassen-Landis, 24, exhibited a little of the old-fashioned youthful fair spirit with their prototype of a plywood chaise that rises from the floor, where it is framed by the sheet of plywood from which it was cut, like a design being born before one's eyes. Asked where it would fit in the marketplace, Mr. Carli described it as a "fairly high-end chair," with a price of more than $2,000.